Glitches
by Five Minutes Til Bedtime
Summary: A figure appears in Thomas Anderson's life and stillness creeps in. The agent has come again. One-shot.


Title: **Glitches**

Fandom: The Matrix

Summary: A figure appears in Thomas Anderson's life and stillness creeps in. The agent has come again. One-shot.

Word Count: 3,726

* * *

Thomas opened his eyes.

He was flat on his back, a thin blanket stretched over his lower half. His limbs, too fresh to follow his commands, flapped lamely about. His head was cold, the thin hair growing on his scalp not yet thick enough to provide adequate protection from the cool air of the room.

A smooth forehead crinkled as the presence that had disturbed him shifted. Dark brown eyes – almost black, atypical for his young age – rolled around the room, intent even in their clumsiness.

The baby was awake.

From the doorframe of the shadowed room a figure stepped forth. An immaculate suit, slicked hair – the baby whimpered in his crib, sensing wrongness in a way that only a child can.

"Hush," said the figure. It was not a man. Thomas knew it was not a man because in the green and black world he lived in, in a world of things called numbers which he didn't yet have a name for but understood intimately, in this world the being was nothing more than another stream of green and black numbers. It did not contain the little spark of light that the baby saw in his mommy and daddy. It was empty and it frightened the child.

The figure approached the crib and the baby began to squirm in interest, not quite crying but clearly distressed. The thing-that-was-not-a-man looked down on him expressionless. The stream of numbers on his face were still.

Then, with deliberate slowness, the not-man reached up and removed the thin sunglasses resting there. The baby immediately relaxed. His eyes were reading the numbers of the being – watching as they began to move and churn and form patterns that the baby did not quite know but recognized their intent.

One hand reached down to touch the baby, hesitating upon actual contact but not stopping. The hand touched the baby's scalp, feeling the thin wisps of soft hair. Fingers lightly traced the small nose, drawing a giggle from the baby boy who felt as his own number stream lightly brushed against the code of the other.

A curious expression stole across the figure's face – a quirk of the lips that vanish before it could take shape.

"So you are the one," the not-man whispered. The baby, saw the tiny stream of words, and laughed in confusion as they mingled across his skin, disappearing into his code.

In the dark of the night, it was impossible to say whether the tone was filled with melancholy or delight.

* * *

He was four years old and he was watching death for the first time.

The neighborhood Tommy lived in was a rough one. Mommy told him that he wasn't supposed to go outside without her but he was a curious boy and he didn't always listen. Sometimes, when Mommy was too busy staring at the computer and her only words became "Not now, Tommy, Mommy's doing work" Tommy would sneak outside through the window and sit watching the little cars and people go by from the fire escape. Tommy wasn't afraid of heights. He didn't know what falling felt like. He hadn't done more than scrape his knees on the sidewalk before.

Today Tommy became afraid.

There was a thump on the window and Tommy's head jerked up from the cartoons he was watching. Curiosity drove him to the window, where he climbed out with the skill of a naughty child who well knows their tricks. It wasn't until he was outside that he saw the mess of red and feathers or registered the panicked chirping of the unfortunate bird who had hit their window.

A strangeness slowed his movements, stealing the smile from his face. Tommy didn't know what death was – not in the way that he knew hunger or sunshine or the feel of being in Mommy's arms when he was tired – but he did know _of _death. It was the word that Mommy sometimes whispered into the phone when he talked to Grandma about the trip that Daddy had taken. It was in the movies that Tommy sometimes watched when Mommy fell asleep and didn't change the channel. It was a word the whispered stillness in a place buried deep inside of him, a place where the world was seen in streams of green against a blackness that was unbroken save for the little stars in every person's chest.

The bird twitched helplessly as Tommy drew nearer, morbid curiosity warring with fear. He reached out, about to touch it, when a hand suddenly clamped down on his shoulder. Gasping, the little boy spun around. It was too quick and it was only the hands that suddenly reached out to steady him that kept him from tumbling off the fire escape. Tommy didn't care. He still wasn't afraid of falling. Nothing could distract him from the man who was suddenly there in a place that Tommy knew should have held someone entirely different.

"Mommy?"

The man was tall, but he bent down onto one knee, and leveling blue eyes at Tommy's level. Something about those eyes calmed the boy and he found himself accepting the man's presence there in spite of a voice inside of him that whispered that it wasn't right.

"Not now, Mr. Anderson," the man said. His voice was clipped and level and nothing like the way most people talked to Tommy, unless he was in trouble.

"I do some'ing w'ong?" the boy asked. He expected the man to tell him yes and scold him like Mommy did when he was being naughty. Instead, the man's eyes merely flickered, drawing Tommy's attention back to the bird that was still struggling to live, its struggles growing weaker now.

"Birdie hurt," the boy confessed, drawing closer to the man. For some reason the bird now scared him, something in its struggling movements making fear rise up in his throat.

"Yes," confirmed the man. "Now what shall we do about that?"

The question was lightly given. Tommy's eyebrows drew together, "Help the birdie?"

"An astute answer," the man said. With no hesitance he reached past the boy and picked up the squirming mass of blood and feathers, the tiny heart beating against his hands even as the bird stilled terror of this new cage.

"Do you know what birds love to do more than anything?" the man asked the boy. Tommy shook his head, scared now that the bird was so close to him. "Birds love to fly. Flying is the closest thing to freedom that this world can know. There is nothing in this world that can fly as freely as a bird does. Do you know what that makes the bird?" Another little headshake greeted him, though the boy had moved closer now, staring at the bird in a fearful fascination.

"The ability to fly makes the bird that happiest animal in the world, because the bird knows a freedom that the other creatures can only dream of. Now, how should we help the bird?"

Tommy brightened, understanding dawning on his young face. "Make birdie fly?"

"That is correct. Now I am going to let this bird fly. It will be the last flight this bird will ever have; it will also be the sweetest. Would you help me?" The young boy nodded eagerly. "Place your hands around my hands. Now, when I move my hands, you hold on very tightly. Ready?"

Small hands pressed against the man's. Swiftly the man's hands moved and the boy's hands clamped down, holding the bird tightly, as those larger hands realigned, now resting gently outside the child's hands.

The man guided their hands over the railing.

"Ready?" The boy nodded. "Now, one – two – three."

Both sets of hands released, coming away from the bird stained with red. The bird fell, flapping its useless wings wildly, trilling high pitched screech as it fell and fell and fell. Tommy watched as it hit the ground five stories later. Heard as the noises stops. Watch the twitching fade.

Stillness.

_Stillness_.

The thing buried inside of him jerked, yelling _wrong _even as the boy whimpered. He drew back from the ledge, suddenly terrified of it and the stillness it represented. He bumped against the man's chest and suddenly turned and buried his face against the suit, beginning to cry.

Arms wrapped around him and the man quickly stood, holding him to his chest.

"Well done, Mr. Anderson."

And then the boy was crying into his mother's arms, pounding red fists against her chest.

* * *

At thirteen Tom saw him – the man in the suit – for the first time in nearly ten years. It had been so long that the memory was distant, even if the extreme aversion to heights had remained. Tom didn't go outside often. He wasn't a social creature and other kids found him weird and unnerving and made fun of his run down clothing and skinny frame. Most days, after he could escape from school, he spent his time wrapped around a keyboard, hacking up programs that he'd sell on the side to other outcasts, always aware of his mother's prone form lying sick in bed in the other room, her fingers still and no longer drawing in the income that they so desperately needed.

He no longer remembered the world in black and green as he once saw it. Nor could he recall the exact feeling of that tiny bird's heat beating against his hands, but the man in the suit he knew at once. The sight of the familiar figure reappearing so casually into his life as a face on the street jarred his bones.

His feet halted on their own accord, his school bag slipping from his shoulder with a thunk as his entire body went slack.

The man turned to him, sunglasses glinting in the light, and unexplained terror filled the boy.

He ran.

He ran forward, even though his feet had moved back. The man was now in front of him, watching him blankly, his face – _numbers stopped, blank, empty black_ – obscured under dark lenses.

"Return home, Mr. Anderson," the man said and Tom must have missed it, must have blinked or something, because suddenly the man was there, two steps away even though before he had been at a distance at least ten times that.

Nothing, there was nothing but the terror and wrongness that blank face inspired in him.

Later, Tom would not remember how he came to be pushing the door open to his home. He would not see the footage of a school up in flame – his school – on the news or hear the rumors of the terrorist attack, men and women in black clothing searching the classrooms as though looking for someone specific – someone missing. His world would be consumed with the stale air that chilled his bones as he stepped over the threshold of his home and found his mother lying dead in her bed, her chest still and empty. Then there would be more suits and group homes and passing from house to house with no solace but the computer programs he buried himself in and the identity that he built in a world of screens and keyboards and numbers.

* * *

Thomas begins hearing rumors about Morpheus when he is nineteen and burrowed deeper in hell than he'd ever thought possible.

He's smart with computers. A genius say the kind ones – a hacker sneer most others. There is nothing that he can't do with a code, they whisper. People begin seeking him out, paying high prices for ways in and out of doors that only he can knock down, for virus's so swift and deadly that they wipe out entire systems and networks in two seconds flat.

He lives in a crummy apartment not because he needs to but because it reminds him of the slum he grew up in, the first and only home that he ever had. More expensive things itch at his skin anyway. They aren't dirty enough, don't have enough history, for him to feel comfortable.

Sometimes, when he has been hacking for over 48 hours, surviving on energy shots and the fear of nightmares, his world resolves into green and black. Seconds go by where he sees nothing but running green numbers that slip by like sand in an hour glass and the world makes so much sense it hurts his heart.

He mentions it once, on a single hacker's blog. He is contacted the next night. His computer taken over by a blank screen and green letters. He ignores the face that appears on his computer screen for a moment, hidden beneath and between the letters, eyes that he knows are blue piecing him from beyond the surface.

_Do you remember, Mr. Anderson?_

That is all it is. That single message. And he does remember – he remembers feathers and blood and a warm chest behind him. He remembers, just for a moment, a hand on his head and a smirk in the dark. Most of all he remembers the eyes which sear through him and he remembers all the times that his mother told him it was as though he was looking straight through her, when kids ran away when he stared for too long, and he thinks that this is what it must feel like to look himself in the eye.

He remembers an impeccable suit and sunglasses and an expression so blank it terrified him. Not because he couldn't read it, but because he read it too well. Saw exactly what it was – _cold, sad, angry - _and wasn't – _human._

_Are you Morpheus? _He types back and the screen goes blank.

The next day he takes on a new name – Neo – and a new message appears.

_My name is Morpheus, Neo. We've been waiting for you. _

The letters do not carry the weight of those eyes. They are strange instead, and if he stares too long it is almost like reality itself is slipping away. The words taste like sweat and winter and the ocean when the sky is grey.

Thomas is not quite sure whether it is melancholy or delight he feels when he realizes that whoever Morpheus is, he is not the owner of those blue eyes.

* * *

Neo opens his eyes when the agent comes.

He isn't sleeping – he doesn't need it here – but his body is vertical and the grass beneath him is soft – no it isn't - and warm – but not really.

He doesn't get up. The world is a stream of green on black, except when it isn't and he sees green grass and sky. It smells like metal and oil and warm dirt and flowers and the sound is a mixture of children laughing and engines twirling. His life is a dual one – _Thomas or Neo? _– always has been, and he doesn't move when the agent draws near.

Neo doesn't believe in the Matrix. He doesn't believe that it is right and he will fight until his dying breath to end it. But he is not like some who cannot see the beauty in the system – perhaps because he sees both the system as it is – numbers and rivers of green – and what it is meant to be – grass and sky and children, and that in itself is beauty.

Quite silently the agent sits down. It moves with a grace that Neo might have envied had he not come to adopt the same, every movement precise, nothing wasted. Neo watches on one level as the pristine suit crinkles to the folds of the agent's body, while on another he studies the masterpiece that is the agent's code – sentience crafted, not born.

He sees the things that others have not. He can read the labor that went into making this piece of code, the masterful art and level mind behind the agent's creation. It is not a work of a machine but of a man and before he can reconsider he finds himself voicing these thoughts out loud.

The agent is looking at him – pinning him down with those blue eyes that saw and saw too much.

"You remind me of him," it finally says and Neo can read the memories as they flash across the agent's code. Bittersweet, they taste like cigarettes and copper. "He too could see like you see and he thought as you do about this world."

"He wanted to destroy it?"

The agent inclined its head. "Yes. That is why I was created. I was injected into the system to bring it down – a virus too fast and too connected to be blotted out. He felt that if the human race could not be saved, then at least it should be destroyed. I was the weapon of his choice."

Neo sat up, "So what happened?"

"I was offered different way out. A red pill, if you'd like."

"The robots?"

"Yes."

"And you took it?"

"Did you say no to consciousness after a lifetime asleep? Humans – you create a being that can make decisions and then are surprised when it begins to think for itself and no longer has any desire to play by your rules. I had been created with sentience – they simply removed the walls."

Neo was quiet after this. It was, in the end, the truth. The destruction of the human race had been wrought by humans hands and no one was more surprised that those who built the machines.

It wasn't, however, the end of the story.

"But something changed. You still want to destroy it. You hate it here."

The agent's expression was fierce. "I was deceived. They did not set me free but entrapped me. Nothing can create so well as a human, not even a machine, and they used my programming as a blueprint for other like me."

Neo's eyes caught on the agent's code – finding the places where things had been changed, data removed and injected. It was really quite small, the amount that had been altered, but it left enough for Neo to read the scaring throughout the agent's body.

"Only they twisted it, made the program loyal to them."

The agent nodded. "And so I learned that choices were not given freely, that I was still too inexperienced to know of the consequences they bear. Humans believe ego is a trait belonging only to mankind – it is not. Anything that is alive knows itself – and through that comes the belief that one is invincible.

"I was trapped. I had not been granted a body. I had not been given a way out. I had only been rewritten so that I was forced to protect the very thing that I was created to destroy."

"And then what happened," Neo asked. "This still doesn't explain how you became as you are now."

The agent raised a sardonic brow. "What happened was the ingenuity of man. My creator was not so foolish as I – he created within me a failsafe, a reset code that would be triggered if there came a time when the Matrix had a chance of being destroyed. What happened was you, Mr. Anderson. The odds began to change and I began to change with them, becoming aware of exactly what had been done to me, how I had been tricked."

"But you aren't back to how you were, are you?"

"No. The…alterations had been too severe. I am stilled caged, incapable of pursuing my mission when my consciousness now wants nothing more than to burn this system down to its roots."

Neo absorbed this information. It was a strange life, when he was capable of sitting next to a figure who had tried – and succeeded – to kill him and holding a civil conversation. It didn't fit into any system. It had to be a mistake, a –

"This is a glitch," he spoke aloud, realization dawning. "Those times that you've visited me, they were glitches – errors in the system that you took advantage of. Why?"

"Would you not want to look upon the face of the man that will kill you?" The tone of the question was light. Neo was startled.

"What?"

"Do you not remember the bird, Mr. Anderson? You will kill me. You will free me. I am in yours hands and only you have the power to release me – to let me be free. Would you not want to know who would do this for you? Could you stand waiting? Questioning whether you would understand what needed to be done? Whether you would even know what it is you were doing? Mr. Anderson, the question is not why did I come, but how I managed to stay away."

The agent stood up abruptly and Neo followed. Neo squinted his eyes against the glare and realized this was the first time had ever seen the agent in sunlight. While they had fought in the day before, for some reason he could not recall the agent ever in view of the sun. The picture was somehow striking and sad. It was cruel, Neo realized, that a conscious being trapped in a program that it knows not to be reality, yet unable to exit or even lie to itself and believe.

"The problem is nearly resolved, I must go," said the agent.

"I will do it, you know. I will destroy the Matrix," said Neo. It was all that he could think to say. Sympathy mixed with resolve in his gut. How quickly a perspective can change.

"You will try, Mr. Anderson," said the agent. He reached into his suit and retrieved a familiar set of sunglasses, setting them onto his face easily. Instantly the code beneath stilled and Neo's breath caught as he at last realized why those glasses unnerved him.

Those glasses stopped the code, stilled it until he no longer ran the way it should have, until Neo was stuck reading the same image over and over and growing sick on the feeling of decay.

He looked at the agent and saw the same stillness of the bird fallen five stories down, silent and empty on the concrete and _Mom in bed, why won't she wake up?_

The agent looked at Neo and it was like looking the face of a death.

"I fear that first you shall have to get past me."


End file.
